Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Two (English language) peculiarities...

...that I noticed in the speech of my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker:

1) "You can do it," in a context where she as supervisor was suggesting a new duty on my list and effectively commanding me to do it.

(Is this some weird translation from Amharic, where there's maybe a verb tense overlap between possibility and the imperative and whatnot?)

2) "Grown already?", she asked the (pleasant) (loud-voiced) (very old) resident about her grandchildren, when making small talk about her family and her grandkids and the resident had just told her how many grandchildren she had.

(Could this be a direct translation of some phrase that's used in Amharic, to distinguish older children?)

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